He could hear the reply as a terrible voice in his thoughts. It reached out to him from the abyss and touched his mind with palpable horror. You think that reality is a constant because that is all you’ve ever known. Prior to creation, I WAS. Your Architect King is an agod who overthrew a reign that stretched into eternity prior!
And yet today is not the day of my waking, and even now I drift towards slumber: the blood offering too weak to sustain.
The glowing tear had already begun shrinking slowly. Rob stood in front of the rip as an accuser.
“You have heard all the words here today, testimony of your own followers’ betrayal. Judge them according to your harsh standards! Your herald, Nitthogr has long conspired against you, scheming for his own profit—using you, as if you were some pawn to be manipulated.”
A great silence came from the grand nothingness on the other side of the diminishing hole. Suddenly, a sucking sound welled up, like a mighty wind.
All the vyrm began sliding, pulled towards the crack with a kind of electromagnetic force. Only the scaly warriors, dead and living, seemed affected. They flew towards the hole, pulled inside with increasing, hurricane force. Bodies collided and clogged the shrinking portal. They snapped and cracked, popping with sickening sounds as the power of the agod pulled his forces into the void where he slumbered.
Suddenly, the hole winked out of existence with a ghastly slurping sound, followed by stark silence. The sun shone brightly. The eclipse had passed.
Rob looked down to his belly. Blood and viscera slicked his midsection. It healed slowly, slower than normal, he thought. He staggered on his feet and reclaimed the sigil engraved Stone Glaive.
Probably healing so slow because I’m so fatigued, he mused. Then he sank to his knees. I just need a minute to rest. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over on his side, refusing to die, but unable to stay conscious.
Epilogue
Rob’s eyelids fluttered and opened. Jackie and Claire stood over him.
Claire weaved her fingers through his wild hair. “There you are,” she said warmly; her face was only inches from his. “You’ve been unconscious for days.”
“Where am I?” Rob sat up gingerly and touched his stomach where he’d been impaled. He moved the blanket away and saw the scar tissue that crisscrossed his abdomen like lightning bolts. His exposed skin was overlapped with other scars that he’d gained since he and Claire had departed company a month ago; they cross hatched his naked body, telling the story of his struggles since her escape. “How did I get here?”
“We drove a semi!” Jackie said, true to her bubbly self.
“After the sun returned, we turned around and found you lying next to the sword of the Architect King.”
Rob looked around, searching for the ancient blade.
“Don’t worry. It’s someplace safe.”
“With someone safe,” Jackie corrected.
Rob looked at Claire inquisitively.
“My father is alive,” she said. “He broke out of some kind of Heptobscurantum laboratory a few states away. He’s staying with Professor Jecima at the moment.”
“So now you tell us what happened in Mullen, Nebraska.”
Closing his eyes, Rob remembered every detail. He recounted his final battle with Nitthogr in front of the netherspace portal. “I stared into the face of madness and told Sh’logath to stay comfortable where he was. He’s not escaping the void any time soon. Not while I’m alive.”
Claire sat down next to Rob. “Do you really think it’s over?”
“The Seven might be down,” he sighed, “but the Heptobscurantum is probably larger than we could ever know.”
Claire nodded. She’d seen that to be true during her month on the run.
“But it will certainly take them a long time to recover. Possibly years or more, I would suspect,” he concluded. “If even one of the high ranking Heptobscurantum escaped the destruction, they will eventually re-emerge.”
“The Prime will certainly rise from the ashes,” Jackie said, she had explained to Claire already how she and Rob had helped the resistance turn the tides against the vyrm before they came to her rescue. “Wulftone certainly seems like a very capable overseer for the reconstruction efforts.”
Claire caught the twinkle in her friend’s eyes when she said his name. She grinned at her. Leave it to Jackie to fall for a guy from another dimension. The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on her. “I’m glad to hear that he escaped. I didn’t think anyone could make it out of that place alive!”
She tried to deflect her thoughts away from the inter-dimensional love connections that seemed to revolve around her. “There’s also Basilisk, although he doesn’t seem to be chomping at the bit to free Sh’logath. And Vivian… Caivev, I mean. She’s still out there.”
“But I will always be right here to protect you,” Rob said, laying a hand gently upon the side of her face, careful not to touch the long line of stitches that ran from chin to cheekbone.
Claire ignored the dull pain and leaned against him. She decided that not thinking about her feelings wouldn’t help.
Claire took his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. Her heart fluttered and all her emotions urged her to kiss him. She awkwardly brushed a stray stand of hair from her face, instead, unsure of taking quite so bold a step.
“We should get out of here,” she tried to grapple with her heart’s impulses. She wanted to be certain that she was not feeling Bithia’s emotions—it had to be real: her recent track record with love had made her reluctant in that area. It would take some time to sort through it. “Let’s go find my father and the professor. They are going to want to meet you.”
She locked eyes with Rob and in that moment knew that the intense love she felt for him was hers and not Bithia’s. Bithia loved him deeply, truly. But these new feelings she had for Rob were entirely her own.
The End
Glossary
The Architect King – the Creator God. He is currently in stone form, trapped within Basilisk’s stronghold at Limbus until some prophesied day.
The Black – common, lowest Caste of the species. Also called blackborn.
Chamber of Mysteries – an impenetrable vault where the arcane artifacts collected by the Royal Family are kept; also home to the Tesseract.
Desolation – a realm of the multiverse; formerly known as Edenya before the Syzygyc War ravaged the landscape.
Dimensional Inversion Pendant – a mysterious artifact made from darquematter; it alters the link between a Prime and his or her variants.
Dunnischkte - a religious ritual to gain a hybrid status between vyrm and human.
Dunnischktet – someone who has completed the Dunnischkte; he or she gains nigh immortality and the ability to shift between hybrid, vyrm, and human forms.
Frostmancer – tarkhūn with special abilities including ice/cold control.
Grimmorium Nitthogr – a journal kept by the fallen Veritas cleric Nitthogr; it is an arcane work that is the culmination of all the sorcery he learned in his earlier years before Sh’logath taught him even deeper and viler magics.
Guardian Corps – royal guards tasked with protecting the royal line and also the chamber of mysteries; some corpsmen decide to join the Veritas, a secretive monastic order drawn from their numbers.
Heptobscurantum – human branch of the vyrm’s cult of Sh’logath.
Lich – tarkhūn with psychic abilities; they are always identified at a young age and pressed into service of the Sh’logath cult.
Limbus – the home to Basilisk, the recognized leader of the Tarkhūn, and the capital of Desolation.
Multiverse – thirty-three connected dimensions that can be travelled via pathways that open up based upon the astral alignment/calendar.
Plains of Neggath - region in Desolation where the Sh’logath cult birthed the great Agod; the area is a veritable wasteland and often the home of Rovers.
; The Prime – the main realm of the multiverse: the ultimate reality. It also refers to a person who lives within this realm; each Prime has dimensional copies living on the different realms of the multiverse.
Pyromancer – tarkhūn with special abilities including fire generation and manipulation.
Rovers – unaligned vyrm tribes. They are typically either Seekers of Maetha or Followers of Krakkath, two different theologies that some vyrm adhere to.
The Seven – illuminati-like ruling council of the Heprobscurantum.
Shade – tarkhūn with extreme camouflaging ability; some have even gained the ability to completely shapeshift their forms.
Sh’logath – the Devourer, Nega-God, Agod of Destruction, the Reality Eater… all are names to describe the terror that lurks on the verge of reality.
Straruck – the Holy city in the Neggath region; it has holy significance to the vyrm (their religions kind of Mecca).
The Syzygyc War – the war that waged many years between the Prime and Desolation as they sought to awaken Shlogath; it was prevented by the Architect King.
Tarkhūn – high caste of vyrm that once ruled their race before a schism led by Nitthogr long ago. They are a rarer, but stronger breed. Some, who resemble member of The Black, have developed additional powers.
Tesseract – a gem created by the Architect King; it is the key to all power in reality and the embodiment of the multiverse.
Thousand Elder’s Sacrifice – the sacrificial torpor they entered into in order to make Sh’logath real in a ceremony they called the Birthing.
TRX718 – a high powered blaster pistol.
Voice of the Thousand Elders – the chief Cleric of the Vyrm’s Thousand Elders. He stayed alive and died of old age, although his spirit remains disembodied and tied to the Thousand Elders will.
Vyrm – reptilian humanoid race whose home realm is known as the Desolation.
Wolves of the Tesseract
book 2
Through the Darque Gates of Koth
Through the Darque Gates of Koth
Wolves of the Tesseract #2
By Christopher D Schmitz
Published by Treeshaker Books
© 2018 by Christopher D. Schmitz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
PUBLISHED BY TREESHAKER BOOKS
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For my daughter, Fifi.
Look her up (author Sophia Schmitz) to find
stories she has written. Trust me, she’s the next big thing.
Prologue
Ancient Times…
Straruck.
“I know all about the different dimensions of the multiverse!” The vagabond howled secret information from the front of the writhing, pulsing crowd that gathered at the edge of campus. Security personnel held the line and made way for several, reptilian guests as they approached the shrine at the college. This dissenter was the only one protesting and had been largely ignored—the remainder of the vyrm people buzzed with excitement—none responded to this person’s trepidation.
He continued shouting with a kind of manic fervor, demanding an audience. “You don’t understand! Even if you don’t care about their residents, don’t you remember the prophecies of Maetha?”
The forbidden name caught the attention of a soldier from the priest class. A lithe and agile vyrm, he looked like a member of the Black caste as he approached. He wore a different frock than the rest of the Thousand Elders who paraded behind him on their way to the temple for the ceremony. Questioning the security officer who held the protester back he asked, “Do you know this one?”
The guard nodded and responded in the vyrmic holy tongue out of respect. [Yes. He is Professor Karin-Ja.]
[He teaches here?]
The guard nodded an affirmation.
Karin-Ja tilted his head inquisitively. By the sigils on his robe's cuffs, he recognized the man as a personal assistant to one of the leaders. “If you would allow me to speak to the elders, please,” he persisted.
“Greetings, Karin-Ja. My name is Keldric.” He motioned to him and the sentry let him pass. “Please, walk with me.”
They left the processional throng behind at the campus and headed for the outskirts of Straruck. Karin-Ja’s scowl protested. “Where are you taking me?”
“We cannot disrupt the Elders. They are in the middle of the Great Ceremony. Perhaps there will be time later for you to make your case, whatever that may be. In the meantime, I want to show you something. On the way, please tell me everything you know of Maetha; I have always been interested in the prophecies.”
Karin-Ja smoothed the itching scales on his neck where a wisp of sand had gotten beneath them. He flicked the detritus away. “Prophecy is not as much of a what—it is more of a whom.” He excitedly prattled on about the ancient legend of Maetha—the vyrm savior.
Keldric smiled as they arrived upon a grassy knoll just outside the city. He waved his hands at the glory of the expansive fields. The fruitful Plains of Neggath spread out before them. [The grandeur of the architect is our glory,] he quoted an ancient proverb from the holy texts of early Mae’le-ggath: an ancient, purer version of the vyrm religion which predated the devotion to the annihilator god, Sh’logath.
Karin-Ja bobbed his head in agreement.
“Do you believe in Maetha?” Keldric noted, “There has been something of a recent renaissance in his belief, you know.”
“This is true. And yes! I believe in him as more than a myth.”
Keldric grinned. “Who do you say Maetha is?”
Karin-Ja looked confused. “We cannot know who he is. Not until he reveals himself.”
“But some say that it was Rasthakka; others say it was Kadrist. Of course, the upper caste claims it was King Chirasq or his brother, Pharaoh Akroth. But I like this new movement… people say it is one of these travelers: the brothers from the Prime dimension. Perhaps one of them is Maetha.”
“What?” Karin-Ja was taken aback by the premise.
“But they’ve done so much to help stabilize the faith and the Elders are quite taken with them.”
Karin-Ja shrugged. “I’m more interested in truth than with inter-caste politics.”
Keldric narrowed his eyes to slits as he regarded him. “Are you caste-less?” His voice carried a hint of scoff. He chuckled, “You are—you follow Krakkath!”
The topic of caste was unfriendly and certainly taboo, given Karin-Ja’s appointment as a professor. The Followers of Krakkath were outlawed—and the professor could truthfully spit on the ideas of Krakkath; he had proven untrustworthy and even now sat on the high council. Of the two prongs of belief held by the caste-less, Krakkathian ideas were as anathema as the other, nihilistic perversions of the old ways.
Karin-Ja merely glowered in response. “What did you bring me to see?” He motioned to the verdant plains. “I already know the glory of Edenya… I teach on this. What more can you show me?”
“Something greater.”
Karin-Ja cocked his head.
Keldric flashed a wicked grin. [I am Maetha!] He snatched a ceremonial blade from his hip and plunged it deep into Karin-Ja’s chest.
Karin-Ja tried to scream but Keldric clamped his mouth shut with one powerful hand. With the second, he jerked the dagger up and through the torso until his victim finally stopped s
truggling and fell limp.
Letting the body tumble to the ground, Keldric shook his head disapprovingly. “We mustn’t disturb the important work of the Elders—not when the Birthing of Sh’logath is so close at hand.”
He wiped the bloody blade across the grass until it was clean and then returned to the ceremony.
***
On his return, Keldric noticed that the doors still hung open to the great temple. He breathed a sigh of relief; he’d already given so much in service of the agod that he dreaded not being present when the Thousand Elders performed the sacrifice.
He poked his head inside and looked around for his master—the High Priest and leader of their faith. Keldric stopped one of the elders who ambled nearby and asked after his master, using his ceremonial title. “Where is The Voice?”
The aged vyrm pointed a talon towards a distant antechamber.
Keldric hurried to find him. He stepped into the room and found The Voice standing with the two human travelers from the Prime—former servants of the Architect King.
Basilisk held a darquematter amulet in his hand. It glimmered and strained against the fine chain as it hovered in the air, pointing to the bound and gagged tarkhūn: a member of the vyrm’s highest genetic line. The man dragged his blade across the tarkhūn’s neck and ended him while The Voice instructed him on the final parts of completing the ritual of Dunnischkte.
The elderly Voice watched with rapt interest as the tarkhūn’s glowing life force was ripped from the reptilian prisoner and sucked into the Dunnischktet foreigner. Keldric stood and stared wide-eyed. The ritual had never actually been performed, to his knowledge.
Basilisk groaned and shuddered at first. His skin burst into the scaly features of the vyrm and then receded to something of a hybrid state and Basilisk seemed able to control and shift which he was in.
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